Posted
by
Soulskillon Friday September 28, 2012 @03:06PM
from the ounce-of-prevention dept.

McGruber writes "The Associated Press is reporting that years before F-22 stealth fighter pilots began getting dizzy in the cockpit, before one struggled to breathe as he tried to pull out of a fatal crash, before two more went on the '60 Minutes' television program to say the plane was so unsafe they refused to fly it, a small working group of U.S. Air Force experts knew something was wrong with the prized stealth fighter jet. This working group, called RAW-G, was created in 2002 at the suggestion of Daniel Wyman, then a flight surgeon at Florida's Tyndall Air Force Base, where the first F-22 squadron was being deployed. Wyman is now a brigadier general and the Air Combat Command surgeon general. RAW-G proposed a range of solutions by 2005, including adjustments to the flow of oxygen into pilot's masks. But that key recommendation was rejected by military officials reluctant to add costs to a program that was already well over budget. Kevin Divers, a former Air Force physiologist who led RAW-G until he left the service in 2007, believes the cost of adjusting the oxygen flow would have added about $100,000 to the cost of each $190 million aircraft."

No denying that shaving off so little and leaving the program and the warfighters at such known risk was a tragic mistake. But I don't know the genesis of the $100,000 cost for software mods. TBH, the Engineering Change Proposal process required to convey the modified requirements in order to change the software as directed may have required more than that much cost just in terms of specification and process costs. Add to that the uptick in formal requirements verification costs, and program schedule delays by adding yet another function point to the development schedule of an already-late program.

No matter what it cost, it would have been worth it, but keep an open mind as to whether a mere $.1 million upper over the program costs is credible.

Remember, this is a DoD development program regulated by the Federal Acquisition Regulations and DoD Systems Architecture and Engineering processes. There is no such thing as a cheap change to program baseline.

As mentioned elsewhere, the total cost would be more like 10 million. However, as mentioned above there are other costs. And seriously, estimates are often an order of magnitude off at the end of the day. So we would be looking at another 100 million. After all, if the project were not already drastically over budget, this would not be an issue. OTOH, when one is looking at nearly half a billion per aircraft, another 100 miliion does not seem so bad, and would have been ok in the end as it would likely

If you read past page 1, what RAW-G warned about isn't even quite what had been happening recently:

"The link between oxygen saturation at lower altitudes and the recent spate of hypoxia-like incidents at high altitudes remains a matter of debate, and it is likely that there are other contributing factors."

On one hand you can say that arguing this now is ridiculous now that we know it is actually a problem, there are probably 100's of other things that were budget slashed and worked out fine. On the other hand the entire reason the plane costs 190 million is because every single transistor and bolt in the aircraft is backed by millions of hours of testing and fail-over systems and with such a high priority placed on safety and reliability it seems ludicrous that they would skimp on safety to the pilot. You have to draw the line somewhere though, turns out someone was wrong and is now a higher up, and in true CYA fashion the problem is buried rather than fixed.

Well, Brigadier General, you are driving a hard bargain. Here's what I'm gonna do? The trim line and the auto dimming mirrors are going to be totally free. I am taking them off. Also free floor mats. Free. Totally free. I had already taken ADM and DPC off. Now what do you want me to do? Oxygen flow control for high altitudes? Man, I will go and talk to the manager. But you know what, he is not going to give in. These things are 100K, for Pete's sake. We can't keep throwing things in and still put food on the table for missus and kids, you know. Just consider it. The number I gave you, 190 million that is probably the lowest we are gonna go and we can't go any lower. OK? And another thing, this deal is off after 5PM today. We got a deadline and you shop around all you want. But if I am not getting the order in before 5PM I am not making quota, and this quarter is gone and we need wait for new pricing promotion data from the factory for the next quarter. OK General. 5PM today. Final. And this is the last trip I am making to the manager. And I am telling you. He is not throwing in the oxygen flow control for free. Definite. I'm positive.

This is, by the way, how a $90M aircraft quickly grows to be a $190M aircraft. It's not one thing that sends a project over budget, it's a series of cascading events each with a minor impact on the design which causes over-runs. It may very well be that this was a good idea overlooked, but there are literally thousands of these good ideas in a product cycle like a modern aircraft.

the cost of adjusting the oxygen flow would have added about $100,000 to the cost of each $190 million aircraft.

That's pretty cheap for an aircraft that cost $412 million a piece. And that's just development and production costs, not even touching TCO.

Lockheed-Martin is full of people who didn't want to be the one guy who tacked an extra $100,000 onto the already astronomical cost of the F-22 and then had to justify it. The buck got passed until it was fumbled, and now here we are with a fighter that has killed more of its own pilots than any enemy.

The problem was not the aircraft and was not the oxygen flow. The solution was found to be overinflation of the pilots upper G-suit ("Combat Edge") that had been occuring for years and in aircraft such as the F-16 and F-15 but no on noticed it then.

As a secondary precaution the F-22 is also having a particle filter removed from the air supply (the topic of this Slashdot article) but this is not the primary fix.

The "Raptor cough" which (nugget?) pilots got spooked about is actually common for pilots flying all high-performance jets after performing high-G manuevers. It just happens that the performance of the F-22 is good enough that a lot of these maneuvers can be performed before energy bleeds off enough you can pull them (that is, the Raptor can use them to end nearly all Within Visual Range training encounters - although lesser aircraft occasionally beat less experienced Raptor pilots from time-to-time, which opponents of the Raptor love to crow about). The medical name of this acceleration-induced coughing is.
acceleration atelectasis
Please refer to: http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/combat-edge-anti-g-ensemble-might-be-causing-raptors-oxygen-woes-372642/ [flightglobal.com]

So please could everyone stop with the media-included scaremongering and stop blaming the F-22 or invoke spooky and mysterious illnessed that pilots of that aircraft are afflicted with (ignoring that fact that the G-suit issue and acceleration atelectatis occurs on other aircraft, just less often because the F-15 and F-16 are relatively lower performance [lol, never thought I'd say that] compared to the F-22).

One of those questions: why in the hell do we need to spend $190M on a plane to fight a war that we'd never get in if we didn't have jackasses running our country that only get in these fights because they have the biggest stick.

Perhaps that's the solution. If the US Military was cut to the bone, just about able to defend the US against an attack from Canada or Mexico but nothing more, then perhaps we'd have a few less stupid, evil, unnecessary wars and our politicians would be forced to actually help the country for once.

I doubt it. I think you're looking more at what we saw in Stealth. Unmanned fullsized fighter jets with advanced AI with the potential to house a man if desired. Unmanned drones aren't going to dogfight, and there still is a ton of need for more than an unmanned drone can provide, particularly since there are still uses for close combat air support vehicles like helicopters, A-10s, etc.

Dogfight? Dogfights are passe. A drone knocks out the other guy 100 miles out and if it doesn't, who gives a shit. Drones are relatively cheap - especially compared to the F-22.

Close combat with a drone? It's already here.

Let's face it, drones are a cheaper and safer alternative and they're getting better every day.

And planes like the F-22 have a serious defect: they are worthless against wave after after wave after wave of cheap planes. The F-22 would run out of bullets and missiles and while it's running away to get more, it'll get it's ass shot off or it's base blown to smithereens - LOTS of dead people.

And don't get me started on the disappointment of the F-35. Our current line up of planes are fine for current needs and we just need to replace our Air Force with all drones.

Our air force is not ready for future conflicts - we are still in this Cold War mentality. And if there is another big conflict, I'm afraid we will have a very rude awakening.

The most advanced military in the world will be the only one flying jets with pilots in future wars. The video game logic of this AC's post is downright sad.

The AC does raise a point: non-conventional air warfare. What if this (extreme and unlikely scenario) occurred: an enemy force launches an extremely large flight of propeller-powered fighter/attack aircraft. Sure, our F/A-18s and such might blow them away until they run out of missiles. The dynamics between propeller (slow but extremely maneuverable) vs jet (fast but makes bigger turns) might prevent a gun-range, outnumbering dog-fight from playing out in our favor. This is before you get into details s

What you're proposing wouldn't make much difference in our air superiority as:
- the jets would be able to return/reload/resume faster than more drones could be brought up
- ammunition could be used far outside the drones range by the jets to bring the drones down
- the jets tactical abilities are far superior to the drones, making close range combat useless
- the jets would be able to take down the drones before the drones would be able to detect the jets
- the jets would be able to buzz the drones, creati

Wow, you make conclusions based on having no specs and assuming the piloted planes are FA-18 or F-22 or something else semi-modern and the drones are biplanes. You got spec sheets on these drones that don't yet exist? Who's to say the drones won't be as fast as a normal jet, just more maneuverable (due to no pilot to keep alive while turning)? Drones would rule the sky so long as an idiot doesn't program them.

That depends. On one hand, the computer systems will be exceptionally complex. On the other hand cockpit and all life support systems can be eliminated, control systems can be decentralized and aircraft itself doesn't have to limit itself to human tolerance levels by design. You could build something like eurofighter that could actually push the limits of the air frame in terms of maneuverability.

So yes, in some terms it would be more complex (command and control computers). In others, it could be much less complex (command and control systems, life support). It's a bit of a mixed bag.

Someone putting up 10000 drones has to have antennas for telemetry. It is infeasible of Iran or any other likely small antagonist only capable of asymmetrical warfare to defend the antennas unless they use most of the drones for that purpose, which defeats the purpose of having so many drones, since cruise missiles (or a sat kill or 2) will knock out a significant amount of all the comm links in the first 2-5 hours. An army marches on its stomach, every

And it's slow enough to be blown out of the sky by mobile AAA unit attached to field installations. About the only way it would have not to is to sit low and have someone else designate targets for it, like A-10s do now. Which would require fire control data providing support aircraft, which will be killed by fighters.

Do you remember what happened in Korea, World War 2, and(IIRC) Vietnam when those scenarios occurred? It didn't end well for the people in prop planes. The Me262 was ridiculously good in the air despite some very serious deficiencies(it was the first production fighter jet afterall), and most of the losses occurred during the very long takeoff and landing patterns, something that is not a problem on modern jets.

Except in maybe Europe in WW2, there were probably very few cases where 50 or 100 prop planes picked a fight with 2 or 4 jet fighters. The Me262 wasn't invincible in dog-fighting either; Chuck Yagger didn't know what it was when he shot it down.

What if this (extreme and unlikely scenario) occurred: an enemy force launches an extremely large flight of propeller-powered fighter/attack aircraft. Sure, our F/A-18s and such might blow them away until they run out of missiles. The dynamics between propeller (slow but extremely maneuverable) vs jet (fast but makes bigger turns) might prevent a gun-range, outnumbering dog-fight from playing out in our favor.

There was a short story something like that - some modern jet fighter slips back in time to WWI, and could not engage the enemy planes due to the speed difference, and the inability of the fighter jet's radar to get a lock onto the paper and wood enemy planes. It turned out that he didn't need to fire weapons at the warbirds of the era. All he needed to do was to buzz them while supersonic. They didn't have the speed or maneuverability to get out of the way, and their airframes were so relatively fragile, that they couldn't handle the shockwave. The planes would snap like twigs in the wake of the jet. And being supersonic, he could travel up and down the entire front lines in a matter of hours.

In WWI losses were pretty much always very heavy. An F/A-18, SU-27, or a modern strategic bomber (B-1 Lancer, B-52, TU-160, etc) would be far scarier, because it would be nearly unkillable and able to attack ground targets with ease. It would also be much easier to rearm with unguided bombs, as opposed to guided missiles of a fighter.

They are currently confident that they could use force to claim Taiwan, but there are many reasons that they do not. Loosing is not one of those reasons.

There is no upside for China if they go and claim Taiwan by force.

There is no upside for China to go to war with the US.

If China was interested in using its military to solve political issues then China would be blockading Japan in regards to their current dispute.

It's not that China isn't interested in using military force - their arms build-ups particularly in terms of arms for use in conquering Taiwan combined with their threates clearly indicate that they are even if mainly for intimidation.

However if China wants to conquer Taiwan and/or the Senkakus and/or the Spratly Islands and/or parts of India, then China knows the best thing to do is wait. Every year the balance of power favors them more. Their technology is improving and their wealth is growing. Mean

Dogfight? Dogfights are passe. A drone knocks out the other guy 100 miles out and if it doesn't, who gives a shit. Drones are relatively cheap - especially compared to the F-22.

They said the same thing about missles. And it was just as wrong then int eh 50's and 60's as it is now.Vietnam proved them wrong, and all of a sudden the replacements to the F4 needed to have dogfight capability.

Close combat with a drone? It's already here.

No, it's not.

Let's face it, drones are a cheaper and safer alternative and they're getting better every day.

They are also more limited, and less capable.

And planes like the F-22 have a serious defect: they are worthless against wave after after wave after wave of cheap planes. The F-22 would run out of bullets and missiles and while it's running away to get more, it'll get it's ass shot off or it's base blown to smithereens - LOTS of dead people.

Wave after wave doesn't happen. As it stands the F22 was designed to meet the goal of taking on 16 - 1 odds and winning, a requirement that was seen as unlikely already because the worst case plausible scenario is 8 to 1, with 4 - 1 being the most likely scenario. Combat flights never fly alone to start with, always in at least pairs, if not 4 together.

Simply put, your claim of "wave after wave" is a fine hypothetical, but simply does not exist in the real world. A combat flight of 4 F22 has the theoretical max capability to take on 72 enemy aircraft. That's 6 squadrons worth. An entire deployed F22 squadron of 12 planes could take on 192 enemy aircraft. the F22, by being stealth, is essentially the Rogue class of air dominance: it is better able to dictate the terms of the fight, striking more targets from a longer distance without warning than any potential enemy aircraft is capable of.

And it would get its ass shot off should it turn to run? How? You forget that the F22 is stealth? That its faster than any credible threat? It's countermeasures are second to none? That it is engaging the inital targets from farther away than they can? In order to shoot its ass off, you have to be close enough to do so, and able to get a target. The whole point is the F22 denies both possibilities. Even if the F22 ere surprised and forced into a close in dogfight if the chance should come to disengage it could clear the area much quicker than any enemy aircraft.

And don't get me started on the disappointment of the F-35. Our current line up of planes are fine for current needs and we just need to replace our Air Force with all drones.

Our air force is not ready for future conflicts - we are still in this Cold War mentality. And if there is another big conflict, I'm afraid we will have a very rude awakening.

The F35 is not designed for air dominance. It could perform such a role, by virtue of being more capable than most enemy combatants, but it's meant to be a multi-prupose, jack of all trades. The F22 is designed for one thing and one thng only: denying the enemy control of airspace. If you honestly think the current line up is fine, and the drones can do all, you're just another armchair quarterback second guessing the refs who've been doing it for years.

Plus its illogical to state that ouor current line up is fine, and then next say our air force is not ready....you cannot have it both ways. They are mutually exclusive statements.

Simply put, your claim of "wave after wave" is a fine hypothetical,... And it would get its ass shot off should it turn to run? How? You forget that the F22 is stealth? That its faster than any credible threat?

Simply put, your claim of "wave after wave" is a fine hypothetical,... And it would get its ass shot off should it turn to run? How? You forget that the F22 is stealth? That its faster than any credible threat?

Drones can do it all, so long as whomever you're fighting has no appreciable airforce, or is unwilling to risk any pilots or resources on the air component of operations.

Against a capably armed adversary is a whole other ball game. And the problem is that 10 years from now you don't know who you might be at war with, or for what. Whomever you're up against might have drones, might be able to jam drones, might be able to trivially shoot down most of the 'ground support' type drones etc. no one knows.

And planes like the F-22 have a serious defect: they are worthless against wave after after wave after wave of cheap planes. The F-22 would run out of bullets and missiles and while it's running away to get more, it'll get it's ass shot off or it's base blown to smithereens - LOTS of dead people.

Wave after wave doesn't happen. [...]

Are you really sure about that - I would agree maybe on the strictest terms: 'it DOES not happen' - the question is how long before it WILL happen?

It may not be 'wave after wave' - but with drones becoming 'cheaper', particularly if they were to be mass-produced - any idea how an advanced plane like the F22 will deal with a couple of dozen drones heading their way? Even if they managed to shoot down 8 or 10 - if those 8-10 drones still manage to get shots fired, they w

It may not be 'wave after wave' - but with drones becoming 'cheaper', particularly if they were to be mass-produced - any idea how an advanced plane like the F22 will deal with a couple of dozen drones heading their way? Even if they managed to shoot down 8 or 10 - if those 8-10 drones still manage to get shots fired, they will likely cause enough problems for the advanced plane as well.

how about a cluster missile that races in and then spawns 50 mini missiles that wipe out the drones en-masse? that's of course hypothetical (AFAIK), but if i can think of a countermeasure to your "wave after wave" of drones, i'll bet the military types are all over it.

if your answer is that the drones get faster, or have better counter measures, or more maneuverable, well... now you're not talking about cheap things that can be used as cannon fodder any longer. you are talking about sophisticated, NOT mass

What drone provides the capabilities of an A-10 or AH-64? What about drones that provide the capabilities of a F-22? What about drones that provide the capabilities of a P-47? Drones serve a purpose, but as of right now drones are very light aircraft carrying very small payloads. They're very useful for certain aspects of asymmetric warfare from a combat perspective, but they have a long ways to go in replacing manned aircraft simply because of what current-day manned aircraft can do that a drone cannot

I used to play a game back in the early 90's called crobots where you get a C interpreter and some additional commands to control a robot, move, scan for objects, shoot, etc. It wasn't difficult to "dog-fight" with simple two-dimensional "robots" back then as a kid...I imagine it's child's play for a government to program actual fighters to dog fight if necessary. I'd think a fighter drone would be unstoppable by piloted aircraft due to G-loads a pilotless aircraft could endure and it coul,d be much small

An EMP capable of taking things out at a range large enough to down an air campaign would be equally effective against manned fighter jets, which also rely on equally advanced electronics, and would also probably take out most of your own infrastructure within range.

Do what Iranians did to the drone they got intact. Jam it's ability to detect where it is, confuse it with fake signal and let it have fun murdering it's own masters while you don't fire a single missile.

There is a reason why people making drones are REAAAAAAALLY careful about just how autonomous armed drones are.

A signal jammer is the exact opposite of stealth. It would be very easy for a drone to find and destroy an F22 without human intervention if that F22 had an EM source such as a signal jammer.

This is why F22s network together wirelessly such that the F22 on the front line doesn't need to use its own radar. It receives radar data from another aircraft that's positioned out of missile range, but at that distance I doubt it would be very effective at jamming signals.

Hey, if it saves you a $10,000 dollar funeral from a tiger attack, that's a $9,950 savings. Good ROI.

The difference is how realistically you assess the POI, as they call it in engineering-management-speak: Probabilty of Incidence. (Or "POO", Probability of Occurrence. I like that one. Anything that reminds me of all the crap in a big program's management and engineering environment makes me smile).

So anyway, if you convince yourself it's not going to happen, you save yourself $x dollars (more than $100k, I assure you) and you leave your time on the PM team with awards for keeping cost and schedule escalation under control. If you spend the $100k, you will never EVER be able to prove it was well invested, because the incident that doesn't happen because of your precautions is indistinguishable that the incident that doesn't happen because it was impossible from the outset.

Sorry. It's a numbers game. Something that's not absolutely not guaranteed to happen WILL NOT HAPPEN in order to justify not paying for prevention.

There's a corollary to this. I usually express it by paraphrasing an old saying in Safety Engineering: "Safety decisions are written in blood."

Hey, if it saves you a $10,000 dollar funeral from a tiger attack, that's a $9,950 savings. Good ROI.

The difference is how realistically you assess the POI, as they call it in engineering-management-speak: Probabilty of Incidence. (Or "POO", Probability of Occurrence. I like that one. Anything that reminds me of all the crap in a big program's management and engineering environment makes me smile).

If it can be shown that this $100,000 "fix" really would have prevented the problem, then the process they used to assess the replacement was faulty. It's easy in retrospect to say that they made the wrong decision, but the value in doing so is that the whole process used to arrive at the decision can be analyzed and improved.

Sorry. It's a numbers game. Something that's not absolutely not guaranteed to happen WILL NOT HAPPEN in order to justify not paying for prevention.

There's a corollary to this. I usually express it by paraphrasing an old saying in Safety Engineering: "Safety decisions are written in blood."

I don't think that's true - there is no guarantee that any particular piece of the hydraulic system will fail, yet there is redundancy built it to those systems because it's likely tha

Ejection seats were an engineering answer to the conflict between an organic requirement (pilot must be able to bail out) and the increased speed of jet aircraft, which made it impossible to bail out safely by just opening a canopy and climbing out with a parachute. And I assure you, the need to resolve this conflict wasn't uncovered in a think tank of life-support system engineers saying "I bet the pilot won't be able to just climb out." Pilots were injured or killed bailing out of fast-moving non-jet airc

But, and it one great big ginormous "BUT", when you get the numbers wrong you are fucked, well and truly "FUCKED". Especially when it's no real numbers you are talking about but guestimates. Well, they fucked up, the got the guestimate numbers wrong and now they are fucked. They should be hauled across the coals, publicly shamed and all associated with the erroneous numbers fired. You seem to have forgotten how that bit of the numbers game works and I assure that is the reality. Make you guesses, get it ri

Shortsighted, true. But most program managers are on a program just a few years, and probably count on being able to escape the impact zone of the scandal before the program craters. Again, cynical, but in my observation, true to varying degrees.

Sadly, too often, the attitude is, "Oh, that problem isn't going to be as bad as the engineers are making it out to be."

Usually, in this case, the engineers are right, and the guy who made the bad decision is long gone, the engineers have to work shit-tons of overtime to deal with a massive fire that would've been far easier to fix years earlier.

It's typical American financial management - Anything more than a year or two out just doesn't matter to anyone any more.

Not even including the life insurance policies that most pilots would have. Back in 1996, it was about $250,000 when my father passed due to Benzene induced leukemia (since the USAF was Benzene happy at the time). That didn't even include the MGIB chapter 35 benefits and Tricare benefits I and my sister received. A quick look at the current policy shows it as $400,000. You could retrofit at least 4+ jets for the cost of killing one pilot.